Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Pallet heART + Tutorial

Pallet decorating is so fun and inexpensive. Here's a quick pallet tutorial on how to paint and hang pallets for your home. Pallet art rocks!

A few weeks ago, a sweet friend posted that she saw a pile of pallets in her neighborhood that were up for grabs. And that's when I became obsessed with turning one of these leftover items into an art piece of sorts for my house. Hubs went and grabbed all five pallets in her neighborhood. I split the loot with a couple of other mama friends with pallets on the brain (thanks, pinterest, we're all *slightly* obsessed now).

I originally thought I would do a scripture or something on mine...but looking around my house, I have a lot of that going on. So...a heart seemed appropriate since it was going in our master bedroom.

The beginning of it all...it was ROUGH!! I did do a round or two with my hand sander...but I did want to leave it a bit textured.

Apparently, I didn't sand it quite enough...it was still quite rough. So rough, in fact, that it wreaked havoc on my sponge brush. Yikes.

After throwing a coat of white paint on it (I just used whatever was left from this project), I painted (freehand) a gold heart. I intentionally didn't do it even. But the slats on the pallet certainly helped with some spacing.

Then my team of sanders went after it. (No explanation as to why he was in a random Mario costume...life as we know it).

Then I went back over the now distressed piece with stain that I wiped off to give it more of a worn look (does a pallet really need a more worn look?). I go into a lot more detail on this weathering/distressing technique in this post...I used the exact same method here.

Wiping the stain off. You can achieve different looks/levels of weatherization (is this really a word?) by the amount of stain you rub off or leave on.

She's ready to hang!

Hanging was a bit interesting. I had originally wanted to hang this on the wall above our bed. However once my handyman (aka, my dad) arrived and realized how heavy this thing was, he told me I'd have a death wish if I hung that above our bed. If it were to ever fall (although he said he guaranteed his hanging technique was fail-proof), it wouldn't be pretty.

We have a faux-fireplace in our bedroom that I decided to hang it above instead. It was a bit of a bittersweet moment...two years ago, I spent a good six hours painting a verse (with an overhead projector, a paintbrush, and a major neck ache) over that fireplace. But the flatness of painted words had kind of served its time for us (although we still adore the verse)...and I was so tired of looking at that font!

These are what my dad used to hold two "L" brackets (or corner brackets) onto the wall...spaced according to the back of the pallet dimensions.

Mounting the L-brackets that are secured into those WallGrippers in the above photo. And getting ready to cover up the verse....makes me a bit sad. The pallet basically sits on top of the L brackets and secured in from the top with screws. Just FYI: the top screws aren't actually load-bearing, they are simply in place to keep the pallet from coming off of the brackets.

My dad's pretty awesome. He works for endless cups of Donut-Shop Decaf and high-fives from my little guy.

Annnnnnd.....done! The thing I didn't think about is that you can indeed see between the slats...not great since there are still words on that wall! HA! I will be dragging out the paint and painting over that verse (makes me a little more sad).

Love the pallet - I didn't notice the words behind it until you mentioned it. I also love the mario costume. It seems someone is always wearing a princess dress around here. Thanks for sharing at Terrific Tuesdays.Rachel

Sarah, I was super lucky. These were literally on someone's curbside. A friend saw them and announced on FB that there was a big pile of pallets in her neighborhood & we went and grabbed them. The next day, I saw a bunch by the dumpster in our church parking lot. It's just a matter of stumbling onto them. Sometimes stores have old ones out by their large dumpster areas...so you may want to keep your eyes peeled for that! ;)

What a great idea, it really looks pretty. Don't worry about the lettering I don't thing anyone would notice it if they didn't know it was there. It really looks nice over your fireplace. So pretty. Thanks for sharing your creative inspiration at Sunday's Best!

Hey!I just wanted to stop by to let you know I've featured your palette he-Art this week at my *Get Creative* linky party!http://justalittlecreativity.blogspot.com/2012/02/get-creative-linky-party-and-features.htmlThis week's party just started, so be sure to stop by, grab your feature button, and link up more of your creative projects :)Have a great week,Molly

Awesome! I just love it. I'm not sure I would have even thought of what to do with a pallet. When I have seen them I usually just think...isn't there something I can do... So thanks for the inspiration!

FAbulous!!! Just linked you on my blog, all the way from sunny Dubai!! Adapted your piece a bit but that's the beauty of these things.....take a bit of inspiration and make it your own!! Thanks for your beautiful posts!!!

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